Apple is in discussions with Spotify to let the latter company’s iPhone users play their music using voice controls via Siri.
That’s according to a report published by The Information yesterday (August 13), citing “three people familiar with the discussions”.
As explained in The Information’s report, Apple announced in June that audio app developers would now be able to integrate their services with Siri via an update to its Siri developers kit, SiriKit.
The news of collaborative talks comes as a bitter standoff continues between the two parties that started when Spotify filed an anti-trust complaint against Apple with the European Commission regarding Apple’s controversial ‘app tax’.
That app tax is also known as a 30% commission which third-party app developers are charged on first-year sales made through Apple’s App Store – including music streaming subscriptions.
At the time, Spotify boss Daniel Ek argued in a blog post that Apple was “essentially acting as both a player and referee to deliberately disadvantage other app developers.”
Apple’s response to its rival’s complaint, as reported by MBW in June, revealed that Spotify doesn’t actually pay Apple a 30% ‘tax’ on anything however, and that it hasn’t paid any additional commission on a single subscriber obtained via the App Store for the past three years either.
Spotify closed its second calendar quarter this year with 108m subscribers and 232m total Monthly Active Users (MAUs).Music Business Worldwide
